Mogwai's Mind

A Historian, A Nerd, A Man With A Lot Of Freetime On His Hands

Monday, February 28, 2005

Oral Goodness

Ok, I know what you are all thinking and your sick. Today has been pretty good so far. I woke up this morning at the ass crack of dawn aka: 7:50am and went to the Idaho Historical Society's Archives for my first real day of work there. I only went in for two hours today but I love every minute of it. It is basically as I hoped it would be, I went in, got sat down in front of a computer with a tape deck and headphones, and summarized an oral history interview a grandson did with his grandfather. It was great. I am not feeling as edgy as I have been the past couple of days and I think that is largely due to the historical work, it soothes me.

It looks like oral history stuff will be my main function at the historical society. It will be my job to go in and listen to all of these oral history interviews and index them. I will also be writing abstracts for all of the interviews. I think it will be very interesting and educational. The main guy said that tomorrow I might be making digital snippets to put on the website which means I will be converting stuff into mp3. Yay! Technology and history unite to transform into the ultra-historicalsaurus with laser beam shooting nostrils! Anywho, its off to lunch with Jake now. It is a Din Fung day. Ahh....Din Fung.

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Bleakness

You ever have the feeling when you wake up that your day is going to suck? I kind of have had that for two days. Its odd. It does not help that I have been having some weird dreams both nights and have woken up from them both nights. This never happens to me, I usually can control my dreams pretty well but these last couple have been really messed up. What do ya do?

I guess the feeling I have had for the last couple of days has not really been the feeling that my days are going to suck but more of a feeling of edgyness. I just feel really anxious and jumpy and I am not sure why it has happened this weekend. Its odd. I just feel like my blood pressure is up and that my mind is going a mile a minute. I don't think I am having anxiety attacks but I am definitely anxious. Hopefully, my sessions at the historical society tomorrow will calm my nerves a tad. Anywho, off to work I go!

Friday, February 25, 2005

Customers Are Idiots

So I am at work tonight when I get called over to the return desk to make sure a couple of electronics devices have everything they came with before they can be taken back. I was amazed when I got there.

This guy who is probably in his forties with a kid that was maybe ten or twelve years old was trying to return two things. The first thing was the original Microsoft Sidewinder joystick. I am not talking about the force feedback one, oh no, this was the original one from like 1995. The kicker is that this jerk had kept the receipt for the entire ten years he had the joystick. Freak! So I look at it and know that there is no way I am going to let the guy return stuff that he purchased before I could legally drive a car. And then I see my loophole in our return policy, the item must have everything it came with, a complete sell unit. So I ask the guy, "Where are the drivers and the manual for this?" He replies, "Oh, well I have the drivers at home and I am sure the manual is there too." The drivers and the manual do me no good when they are not in front of me so I tell him I have to have both items before I can return the joystick. If anything, I was at least going to make the guy waste his time if he is going to bring back a worthless joystick to get the sixty bucks it was worth when he bought it. Just out of curiousity, I asked him what was wrong with it and he said that the joystick worked fine but did not work with anything above Windows 98. No shit. So I looked at him for a second and then I told him, "Sir, the joystick IS ten years old." "Oh, I know but I thought that Microsoft would have a software update for it on their website but it doesn't even look like they make joysticks anymore." I told him they stopped about five years ago and then restated the fact that his joystick was ten years old, trying to make him catch on to the fact that I thought he was a cheap worthless bastard and that I pitied his child who had to grow up with a father that was as devoid of cooth as he was. He did not get it.

The next thing he pulled out of his box was a pair of Motorola walkie-talkies. Antique Motorola walkie-talkies that were about eight years old. He didn't even have the receipt for these. Retard. So I pretended to look for the product in our computer database for a couple of seconds and then told him that without something to prove that he actually bought those at our store I could not approve of a return on them either. I think this kind of annoyed him and was a tad proud of myself for this. I had single-handedly shut down a guy who thought he could clean out his garage and bring me all of the crap that he found that even the Salvation Army would have laughed at him for donating. Only with me it was worse because he thought he was going to get money out of me. Punk.

After he stomped off, the two girls that were doing returns congratulated me for shafting him. Nobody likes people who are too cheap to suck it up and by a new product after their ten year old one become antiquated. I am hoping he comes back tomorrow with the joystick and all of its components so I can find something else to throw at him. Customers make my job so entertaining but so annoying at the same time. They are like herpes, they bother the crap out of you when they are around but you feel so relieved when they finally go away. Freaking customers.

Dr. Laundry Is In

I had to think about what to name this entry because I had another good title for it as well. Dr. Laundry is in because right now I am wearing scrubs that Mushi brought me from the hospital. I love my scrubs, they are quite comfy. But why am I wearing them you ask? Because I am doing my laundry at the moment and clean clothing is scarce at the moment.

I know what you are thinking, why is this guy telling me that he is doing his laundry? The answer can be summed up quite well in the other title I was contemplating for this entry, "The Guilty Confessions of a Spoiled Man-Child". I can count on one hand how many times I have done my own laundry in my life. I am not talking about just throwing in a pair of pants here or a shirt there, I am talking about actually seperating the lights from darks and doing a full load of laundry. I have done it, if my memory serves me, maybe...maybe...four times in my entire twenty-five years of existance. Pathetic.

Growing up, my mom always did the laundry around the house. I had offered to help quite a few times but she almost always refused and insisted on doing my laundry for me. My dad would always do the ironning. He is a neat freak and everything has to be done a certain way. To this day, I have never ironned a complete article of clothing by myself. Also quite pathetic. When I got married, Mushi did all of our laundry because she was also concerned about my lack of laundering knowledge and wanted to protect her clothing from the ignorant clutches of a husband that, while well intending, could quite possibly destroy many of her delicates in one fell cycle of the washing machine. So what it comes down to is that I have never really had to do my own laundry, that is until tonight.

Part of me feels very proud that I am actually washing my own clothes. Part of me also says I should be ashamed of myself for taking advantage of the motherly overbearringness unceasingly dished out by my mom. In many aspects of my life, I have never truly had the chance to be an adult and I feel bad about that. I feel that in some ways, Mushi had a hard time seeing me as a man because in quite a few areas, I was not much of one. This is especially true when it comes to taking care of myself. I have never ironned clothes, very rarely done laundry, almost never mowed a lawn, and seldom was able to handle my own money very well. All of these things were done by my parents or I have been bailed out by my parents and have never learned the lessons that life was trying to teach me. In a way, my well intending parents, cheated me out of a lot of experiences I needed in order to mature. I have known this for a while now. The thing that sucks is that I can see how Mushi would get kind of creeped out by me being so immature. How can I provide stability for her or our future kids if I can't even do my own laundry? I can do my own laundry now.

The money thing is another prime example. I have never been great with how I have handled money, though in the past couple of years I have gotten much better about this. Mushi was a great help here, though she still manages most of the household financial stuff. But when I really screwed up and got into a bunch of credit card debt, my parents bailed me out in one way or another. I needed to learn that lesson but my parents took the bullet. Credit cards are evil! I could not have sad that a few years ago. I will also never take money from my parents in that way again as long as I live. I can provide for myself and my family. I can take care of myself.

I know that I also mentioned mowing the lawn as something I have almost never had to do but that is a funny story I will save for a future post. Right now, I need to go check on my clothes.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

A Day of Progress

Today was a really good day for me. I made an appointment earlier this week to talk to a person at the BSU career center about my resume. My appointment was at 9am and I got there at ten til. After waiting around for a few minutes, I was escorted back to an office and the lady was very helpful in suggesting ways to improve my resume. The meeting didn't last that long so after it was done I went to visit my mom at work.

My mom has a good sized office at a local high school and she is responsible for most of their accounting stuff. I talked to her for a minute and then plopped down into a chair and fired up the laptop. Within half an hour my resume was down. Yes!!! I have been wanting to get that done for months now. I also did a plain text version of it because that is was Micron was asking for on their jobsearch website. I left my mom's work a very happy camper.

I then had lunch with my dad and he look the resume over and couldn't find any problems with it. Today was like a parental bonding day. If I do not do this every once in a while they get antsy.

After lunch, I went to work. Yeah....the progress was put on pause when I got to work. I hate work. Anywho fast forward eight hours and the progress resumed. I dropped off this one girl I work with that needed a ride to her house because her car was non-functioning at the moment and then got dinner.

After dinner, I jumped on the computer and submitted my resume to Micron. I feel sooo relieved right now. This is something that I have been wanting to do for months and it is finally done. I get nervous when I think about changing jobs largely because I am not overly fond of breaking my routines. But as you have seen, I hate my job and this is one routine that needs to be broken. The other cool part is that now I have my resume finished, I can submit it to other places. I don't think I will be at my old job much longer. I am feeling lucky and very positive at the moment. I am feeling kind of grown up and that is something I haven't felt for a while as well. Anywho, today was definitely a turning point in the battle for a better, more satisfying job.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Work Weirdness

Work was slow tonight. Not a lot of people, not a lot of anything. Except for four middle aged men walking through the building. The company I work for only has one major competitor and that company has been thinking about moving into our territory. So what better way to get a feel for our business then to send in four of their managers to scope us out on one of our slowest nights. No that won't be obvious at all.

These guys come in, all of the are dressed semi-casual to semi-formal and all of them stay in a tight little group while vulturing throughout the store. They would stop at specific products and hold little mini-seminars around them. Picking up the object, opening it, talking, laughing, and then moving on. It was like they were ninjas...only louder...dumber...and much less agile. That last part I am just speculating on.

To me, if I were going to study my competitor, would it not be more intelligent to come in on a busier day? Maybe only send in one or two guys at a time? Maybe whisper? Thats just me though. Its not like they were doing anything wrong but they were just being stupid about it. They were attracting attention to themselves. And the best part of all of this, I get paid more than them, a lot more. :)

Monday, February 21, 2005

Disaster Cleanup

Ok, it was not a disaster and honestly, it didn't make that big of a mess but, the little kegger that we had the other night lasted almost 48 hours. I have gotten to bed before 3am since Friday. So much for my bedtime. :) I will try again tonight.

It was a pretty fun party. I enjoyed seeing a lot of my friends and drinking a tad. I only drank on the first day of the kegger, my body doesn't respond well to sustained drinking. Now, only Dylan and I are left and the house is quiet once more, thank goodness. As much as I like people, sometimes after they get too many drinks in them they tend to talk too much. Some just plain won't shut up. Oh well, it was a party and its not like we have those often.

In other news, I called the BSU career center in an effort to set up a time for them to go over my resume with me. I figured that since the service is free, I may as well take advantage. I still have not applied for that Micron job and it is bothering me. My goal for this week is to apply for that job.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Party Like Its 1999

So tomorrow two of my friends are thowing a party over here at Dylan and I's place. Dylan basically told them that as long as they cover the beverages that they can have a party. Evidentally, there is a keg sitting in the garage right now.

I am excited, I haven't gone to an actual party since early in my college days. I have been moping around here all week being a sad bastard so I think this will be a good opportunity to talk to people...and drink. It should be entertaining to say the least, most of my friends are pretty entertaining individuals. Anywho, I will update tomorrow from the heart of party central.

Bed Time for Mogwai

This is stupid. It is 1:50pm and I am just now getting up. Why? Because I went to bed at 4am. This is ridiculous. From now on I am enforcing a bed time upon myself. I will be in bed with the lights out at no later than 2am everynight and will wake up no later than 10am every morning from here on out. I am a moron.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Bandwidth Bandit

Living in Dylan's house is not too bad with one exception, no internet. Dylan was downloading some games, got busted, and lost his internet access. Fortunately, they have no problem giving it to me but they will not be able to install 3 mbit cable here until a week from now. Beh.

I was however, pleasantly surprised to turn on my laptop and have it connect to the net right off the bat. One of Dylan's retard neighbors have a totally unsecured wireless router and have graciously been letting me use it. No, they do not know I am doing it but hey, a guy has to survive. So for the next week it looks like I will be using someone else's connection to post on here, do email, and browse the web. Thank goodness for small favors.

Monday, February 14, 2005

A "Mixed Bag" Kind Of Day

Today,is an odd day. There is one part that is kind of odd, one part that is really good, and one part that I have not decided on yet.

Lets get the kind of odd out of the way. Today is the first day that I will technically be living at my new place with Dylan...without Mushi. Part of me is excited and the other part is kind of sad and nervous. As I said in the last post, this is going to be an interesting period in both of our lives.

The undecided part is the whole Valentine's Day thing. Part of me says it sucks and is kind of bitter and the other part of me is okay with it. I normally think Valentine's Day is an okay holiday. If people want to celebrate it thats cool but I think that a lot of the values that Valentine's Day exemplifies should be celebrated and practiced everyday with those that you love not just on holidays and special occasions. That and this Valentine's Day kind of sucks for Mushi and I. Then again, there are parts of it that fit Mushi and I's bill exactly. We are doing what we are doing out of love for one another. As I said, I am undecided on this one.

The really good thing that happened today is that I am now a volunteer for the Idaho State Historical Society. My first job is going to be listening to about 400 tapes of interviews this lady has conducted with Japanese people that were interned in Idaho during WWII and indexing them. I will listen to them and write summaries for each interview. I may also be converting the tapes to CD and maybe MP3 so that we will have digital forms of all the interviews, some of which are over twenty years old. It is more of a preservation effort than anything. They are excited that I know my way around computers well enough to do this kind of thing for them. I am really excited about this and I think I can have a positive influence on the society and contribute back some of my historical skills. I am really happy about that.

Well, I need to take off. I am meeting my brother in a couple minutes for lunch at the illustrious Panda Express. :)

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Splitsville

So, Mushi and I are splitting up for a while. Yes, this is wierd.

I have never liked the idea of ranting and raving about the problems I have in relationships. In my humble opinion, what goes on between you and your significant other is your business and I do not like people bitching to me about their love life. In turn, I do not thing people probably want to hear about my issues either. On this note, I do not speak to people about problems that Mushi and I experience. That is why to some it may come as some surprise that she and I will be splitting up for a bit.

What!? Why!? The reason is simple, we are not happy. We have not been happy for quite some time and we need to fix things. Most of the reasons we are not happy tend to stem from personal issues she and I have within ourselves. Mushi needs to figure out who she is and what the term "I" means to her. She needs to figure herself out before she becomes associated with another person. She needs to be Mushi and not "Mogwai's wife". I too, have to figure some stuff out for me as well. My family life was very controlled. My parents were like a safety net for everytime I screwed up and I grew to rely on that too much. My bad for doings so, their bad for doing it too much. Either way, since I have been on my own with Mushi, I have started to mature in different ways and many ways that I probably should have done before now but have not until recently.

The only way we can figure out how to do this stuff for ourselves is to be by ourselves for a bit. This will probably not be a permanent split but who knows. The bottom line for me is this: Why should Mushi have to live with me her entire life and not be happy? If I truly love her(and I do) I would want her to be happy regardless of whether or not I am in the picture. We figured now was a better time to do this than say, five years from now when we have kids that would complicate the situation further. If we need to end our relationship I would rather do it without kids getting involved.

Mushi and I did not get into a big fight or anything, this has been building up for a while. The funny part, is that my post about being a parent and wanting kids acted as a catalyst for this whole thing.

We told our parents tonight about it and that was a party in and of itself. My parents thought we were coming over to chat and possibly eat dinner with them and then we dropped the bomb and dinner ended. Whoops. In a mushroom cloud of despair, my mom promptly stopped munching on her steak and started to tear up. We really did not intend for them to stop eating, it just happened. Overall, both sets of parents took it as well as can be expected when they here that their children who have been married less than eight months decide to split up. What do ya do?

So for the time being I will be living with my friend Dylan and Mushi will live in our house. I think this will be a positive thing. I think now that both of us are taking a step back and catching our breathes and figuring out what in the hell we stand for, when we go back into our relationship we will do so better people and therefore, making our marriage better. Make sense? Didn't think so. Mushi and I tend to be about the only people that truly understand why and what we are doing this for. My friends have been able to grasp this better than our parents and that could be because they have a rather introspective unbiased view of the ant farm called "Mushi and Mogwai's relationship".

The past couple of weeks have sucked to say the least but in the past day or so, I think both she and I are coming to grips with what needs to be done and I think we are both going into this with very positive attitudes. We will still communicate with each other but it will be limited. The point of this exercise is to be apart and tend to ourselves. In a month or so, we may meet for lunch or something and discuss how things are going face to face. This is going to be a very hard but a very positive time for the two of us. I think in the end, it will make our marriage way stronger than it is now. And, if we do not get back together, it will in the very least make us stronger individuals than we are now.

So, starting on Monday I will live with Dylan. For those of you who need to contact me, my email and cell number will remain unchanged.

I love Mushi with all of my heart and cannot wait to get this started. I want to be with her for the rest of my life but both of us need to be in the relationship and happy with it. Now is the time to make that happen.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Goodbye Carly!

Carly Fiorina, Hewlett Packard's CEO is stepping down effective immediately. This is good news, most people around Boise that work for HP cannot stand her and feel that she has driven the company into the ground. While reigning as Queen of the Printer People, Fiorina spearheaded the merger with Compaq, a dumb move in my opinion. HP products, computers specifically, went downhill a tad quality-wise and Compaq products got a little better in that department. Now both of them suck, just a varying degrees.

The thing that really drives me nuts about Fiorina is the way that she went about hiring and firing people at HP. I know a gentleman in his sixties that was an engineer there for at least ten years and they let him go. The really cheap part was when they called him back and told him they wanted to re-hire him but as an independent contractor with no benefits. How freaking shafty is that? I understand that this is pretty commonplace in the tech field but I do not think it is right. Hopefully, whoever steps up to the helm is a little bit more employee oriented than Carly was.

To her credit, she was one of the few female CEOs to lead a company the size of HP and she deserves kudos for that. She helped to modernize HP's look and bring them up to speed with other tech companies. The bottom line is however, I doubt she will be missed by too many people at HP, at least not the ones that I know.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Wow....Now I'm 25....yay.

Yesterday, as I mentioned in the previous post, was my birthday. Woohoo. So now I am 25 and honestly, I really don't give a damn. Yesterday came and went without too much fanfare though, I did get some cool gifts. My parents gave me a hundred bucks that will be going to a nice leather Lane computer chair at Costco. Mushi's parents got me a new computer tool kit that I have been needing for a couple months now. My old toolkit was a Compuserve freebie I have had for six years and it was falling apart. I have to say though, that was the coolest freebie ever. Mushi's gift to me was to pay for half of the Lane chair and to take me out to dinner so that was cool. My brother and his girlfriend got me a Best Buy gift card that went toward Batman: The Animated Series Vol. 2. I need to break that open and watch some of those episodes. I also got some money from my grandma that also went towards Batman: TAS.

Now that I am twenty-five, it is time to call my insurance and see if it is going to go down at all...lets do that now.

[5 minutes later]

Thats one thing I love about Geico, those people are freakin speedy when it comes to answering their phones. My insurance did go down so that is cool. Now I can get that Ferrari I have been looking at. If you need insurance and don't have a clue who to go with, check Geico out. They have always been pretty cool with me and they do have good rates.

Well, that pretty much sums up my birthday. It is kind of depressing to think that the next birthday I have that anyone will care about is my 40th. Ugh. Did I say that in my last post, oh well.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Birthday Eve

Birthday Eve is much like Christmas Eve but for me. Yeah, my birthday is tomorrow. I can't say I am moved all too much by it, it is just my 25th. The only cool thing that happens to you 25th birthday is that your car insurance goes down. While I like this, it is still not too thrilling. The next time anyone gives a rat's ass about my birthdays will be when I turn forty. Thats also an uplifting thought.

Anywho, Mushi and I are going to my parents tonight for dinner. I think my mom is making Beef and Broccoli, yum. Tomorrow, Mushi and I are going out to dinner and then maybe a movie or something. All in all, this probably won't be the most eventful day of my life. Here is a thought for you to ponder, what is your favorite birthday memory? For me it was when i was probably seven or eight and my grandparents gave me a very oddly shaped gift. When I opened it, it was a GI Joe kite and two GI Joes. I remember that one of them was Dr. Mindbender. I don't know why that sticks out to me so much but it does. Odd.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

My Latest Obsession

When driving in my car, I like to listen to talk radio. Something about peoples' voices is soothing to me. Anywho, every Sunday, there is a radio show on called "When Radio Was" and it showcases radio shows from the 1940s and 1950s. In short, this program rocks. I listen to it every chance I can and one day an idea hit me, somewhere on the internet there has to be people that have mp3s of The Shadow, Suspense, and other fun shows. How right I was.

I found this place called The Digital Deli that offers FTP access to something like 64,000 old radio shows. The downside is that you have to pay for access but on the upside, they are cheap and fast. I am paying $6.50 for a gig of mp3s and that equates to around sixty hours of radio shows. Yes, your ears are not playing tricks on you, I am actually paying to download mp3s. The world has started to come to an end somewhere and snowboarding passes are being sold in Hell. Yes, I would have downloaded them elsewhere if I could have found complete collections of them and at the same level of quality that the Digital Deli has them for but alas, I could not. Either way, if you want to hear some old radio shows and you don't mind shelling out $6.50 for them, the Digital Deli is the place to go. I am glad there are people out there archiving these shows because radio was the foundation of home entertainment for the better part of three decades in the U.S. and it would be a shame to lose all of those fun radio moments.

This is an example of the past meeting the present that I think is cool. Here you have me, a guy that was born in 1980, being able to listen to stuff that had been off the air for almost thirty years by the time I was born. I am able to download episodes of "The Shadow" and pop them on my iPod to listen to them at my convenience. How freaking cool is that?

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Damn You Suncoast!!

I have a $20 gift card to my local mall and figured I would snag a DVD with it. I went in with the intent to buy the second volume of Batman: The Animated Series and knew that I would have to fork over a little cash to make up the difference but I did not think it would be that big of a difference! They wanted almost $50 for the DVD set! Fifty Bucks!!!! WTF! In fact, there wasn't a single DVD I wanted that was below twenty-two or twenty-three bucks. My conclusion: Suncoast is the single biggest rip off artist in the DVD kingdom.

I then decided to tell the mall to take a flying leap with their gift card and just give me cash but of course, they would not do this either. Just for fun, I then ventured to Best Buy which is no more than a couple of blocks away from the mall to see what their price was for the same DVD set. As I suspected, they wanted $37, a much more reasonable price. Now, I just need to find some one to give the mall gift card to in exchange for cash.

I do not see how Suncoast can remotely justify marking up their DVDs almost 25% above everyone else. It is not like they are a special store that only deals in rare movies, they are just another store in the mall that thinks they can make a buck by ripping off sixteen year olds.